Live music review: Oh Rourke - oh man

And as if to announce the arrival of his offspring, Lonn Dubh (Blackbird), to a captive, largely mixed, audience at the White Horse, Ballincollig last night, the Dublin-born balladeer gave us a story - a long one, but a magical one - about moving back a few years ago to live in Kinvara, Galway, from where his grandad Michael left in 1935.

The family bloodline died off in the area until Lonn Dubh ‘the first of the O’Rourke blow-backs’ in 102 years to the village was born recently. His gig opener, ‘Stars of Kinvara’, might have taken a while to gestate last night, given the length of his story, but it was worth the wait and was delivered with the wonderful tunefulness of a blackbird.

In a gig where at times he was a little over talkative, his wit, engaging personality, guitar-playing (there were five of the instruments on stage), voice - what a range; delivery and banter were, as usual, top drawer - “where did I put that glass of white wine I brought on stage? I must get red next time, it’s easier to see.”

What followed was a selection of songs that would grace any stage, one of which, he wrote after being invited last January to the Fenians Freemantle and Freedom Festival, which remembered the ‘Hougoumont’, Australia’s last convict ship, which arrived in the port with 108 passengers, 280 convicts, 62 of whom were Irish Fenians (poets and artistic types) young men, most between 19 and 30, who in 1867 were involved in a failed rising. After spending months in solitary confinement in English prisons they boarded the ship, where despite their sea-sickness, they shared stories, held concerts, wrote poetry, produced a newsletter and looked after their companions.

They also dreamed of escape. The most famous of them, John Boyle O’Reilly, did escape on an American whaler a year later and together with others in the USA and Ireland, organised a crowd-funding venture to purchase a whaler, the ‘Catalpa’, and freed his mates from Fremantle Prison… ‘no man who is free is free alone’, lyrics worthy of such derring-do.

Amidst an audience call for ‘Galileo’, he quips: “Now I’m breaking cover to play a cover - I’ll cover myself later” and it was time for Joni Mitchell’s ‘Ladies of the Canyon’; Hogey Carmichael’s ‘Stardust’ before returning to his own gems, ‘Marrying The Sea’ and on to ‘a Famine shuffle’ with ‘Mary Kate’ and the haunting ‘Poor Boys Shoes’, and that heart- wrenching poorhouse story of the Ó Buachalla family from Macroom - mother Cáit; father Pádraig, son Páidrigín and daughter Síle. The children died not long after arriving in the poorhouse in Macroom. The heartbroken parents returned to their cabin only to be found dead in each others arms the following day by a neighbour.

O’Rourke told us that after singing the song in Skibbereen during the summer a man approached him to say he knew a man, who knew a man, who knew where the Ó Buachalla’s townland was. He took the singer to the location and what’s more, following a gorse fire, the ruins of the Ó Buachalla’s tiny cabin was exposed. The reality of his accalimed album ‘Chronicles of the Great Irish Famine’, An Gorta Mór, was suddenly right before his eyes.

It’s a haunting story, a haunting song. At times it was haunting gig fittingly finished off with ‘Children of ’16’, the story of the kids killed in the Easter Rising.

Footnote: To celebrate the re-release of his classic 2004 debut ‘Since Kyabram’ O’Rourke brings members of the original band to Live At St Lukes, Cork on December 7 next. They will play the entire album, and if last night was anything to go by, there will be a few surprises and wonderful stories. Christmas can't come soon enough.